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NCRI – In an international conference held in Paris on Friday, January 6, at the invitation of the CFID (French Committee for Democracy and Human Rights in Iran), dozens of distinguished American and European dignitaries warned of obstructions and non-cooperation by the Iranian regime and Government of Iraq in guaranteeing a peaceful solution for Camp Ashraf, where members of the Iranian opposition reside in Iraq.<\/p>\n
The conference speakers were Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance; Gov. Howard Dean, former Governor Vermont, Chair of the Democratic National Committee (2005-2009) and US presidential candidate (2004);\u00a0 Gov. Tom Ridge, former Governor of Pennsylvania and the first US Homeland Security Secretary (2003-2005); Louis Freeh, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (1993-2001); Gov. Ed Rendell, Chair of the Democratic National Committee (1999-2001) and Governor of Pennsylvania (2002-2011); Judge Michael Mukasey, US Attorney General in the Bush Administration (2007-2009); Ambassador Mitchell Reiss, former Director of Policy Planning at the US Department of State; General James Conway, Commandant of the US Marine Corps (2006-2010); Rep. Patrick Kennedy, Member of US House of Representatives (1995-2011); Gen. Chuck Wald, former Deputy Commander of US European Command; Gen. David Phillips, Commander of U.S. Military Police (2008-2011); Prof. Alan Dershowitz, one of the most prominent advocates of individual rights and the most well-known lawyer in criminal cases in the world; Ambassador Dell Dailey, Head of the State Department’s counterterrorism office (2007-09); Col. Wesley Martin, former Senior Anti-terrorism Force Protection Officer for all Coalition Forces in Iraq and Commander of Forward Operation Base\u00a0 in Ashraf; Prof. Ruth Wedgwood, Chair of International Law and Diplomacy at Johns Hopkins University; Philippe Douste-Blazy, Former French Foreign Minister and to the UN Secretary General; Alain Vivien, former French Minister of State for European Affairs; Rita S\u00fcssmuth, former President of German Bundestag; G\u00fcnter Verheugen, European Commissioner (1999-2010) and former Advisory Minister in German Foreign Ministry; and Sen. Lucio Malan, Member of Italian Senate.<\/p>\n
Below is speech by Hon.Tom Ridge:<\/strong><\/p>\n Viva Ashraf.\u00a0 And Mrs. Rajavi, it is a great pleasure and a privilege not only to join you and the leadership of the MEK, but the distinguished group of international citizens who are joined in common effort and in common cause to support you and your efforts for the residents of Camp Ashraf.\u00a0 We appreciate your courageous, your principled leadership.\u00a0 We stand with you on your call to perhaps even replace the United Nations as a spokesperson for the residents of Camp Ashraf.\u00a0 They are a fine interlocutor but no one can better speak to the aspirations and the goals and the needs of the residents than you, Mrs. Rajavi.\u00a0 [applause] By the way I think it\u2019s unlikely that the Maliki government will welcome you to Baghdad or even a neutral site.\u00a0 But if they do, get a large plane because I think a lot of people in this audience want to go with you, including those here as well.<\/p>\n Ladies and gentlemen, years from now I suspect that historians from around the world will take a look at what has transpired over the previous 25 or 30 years at Camp Ashraf, in Iran and they\u2019re going to write a book about the MEK, about the Democratic Iranian Opposition, about the intrepid courageous residents of Camp Ashraf.\u00a0 Many of the members of the panel here have actually witnessed some of those chapters that have probably already been written in the minds of observers for the past 15 or 20 years.\u00a0 Some of are just recent observers.\u00a0 Some of us are just recent participants.\u00a0 So there have been a few chapters that have been written, but sadly a few chapters remain.\u00a0 And I think we gather here today as we\u2019ve gathered for the past year and will continue to gather as long as it takes to make sure that the final couple of chapters are written in a way to achieve the outcomes and the results that Howard Dean mentioned in his remarks just a few moments ago: the peaceful resettlement of Iranian democrats throughout the world in support of the Iranian Democratic Resistance within Tehran, to achieve a regime change in Iran, to replace the mullahs and Ahmadinejad with elected representatives of the people of Iran.<\/p>\n We gather at this critical moment as these chapters have yet to be written, and I suggest for my purpose of my remarks today, there might be a couple of themes at least in this next chapter that I want the historians to pay attention to.\u00a0 The first theme they may want to write about is the deception that has occurred over the past four or five months in relationship to some of the negotiations, or all of the negotiations that have gone on under perhaps the well-intentioned efforts of a lot of people involved, either from the United States or the United Nations, but the very unsuccessful, timid efforts.\u00a0 The deception I speak of begins with the notion at least I think many of us who have been on this conference calls and in communication with your leadership of the MEK have been under the impression that once that artificial deadline was established the UN special envoy was announced, that there would be a legitimate effort to negotiate a mutually satisfactory agreement between the leadership of the MEK and the United Nations and the Iraqi government to provide for the safety and security of the residents of the camp.\u00a0 That was the impression that was given.\u00a0 Many of us felt there would be shuttle diplomacy back and forth.\u00a0 The camp, Paris, Baghdad, back and forth, negotiated settlement.\u00a0 Well that hasn\u2019t happened.\u00a0 There has been no negotiation.\u00a0 There has been talk.\u00a0 But the final agreement was not signed by or signed off on even a rhetorical way by the leadership of the MEK.\u00a0 It\u2019s a rather deceptive practice to say one thing and do another. Let history record, although there were verbal assurances of the safety and security of the residents, it is not embedded in the agreement. Therewas one trip to Paris, one trip to Baghdad, and then it was a fait accompli.\u00a0 \u201cHere\u2019s the memorandum of understanding, take it or leave it.\u201d\u00a0 Mrs. Rajavi, courageous, principled leadership on your part convincing the residents to rely on you, and I might say to rely on the word of the United States, as unsatisfactory as that memorandum of understanding may be, as disingenuous as they may have been in suggesting that it would be negotiated, you have called upon them to trust you, trust us, trust the International community, trust the UN and trust the United States, take the agreement to live by it.\u00a0 Principled, courageous.\u00a0 But there\u2019s still more work to do.\u00a0 That theme, deception.\u00a0 It\u2019s supposed to discuss in good faith if you\u2019re really interested in the kind of principled, righteous outcome that we all believe is absolutely essential in this matter.\u00a0<\/p>\n There may be a theme called delusion.\u00a0 Many of us have been on these conference calls, and again I don\u2019t doubt the intention of the men and women involved in trying to affect the peaceful settlement.\u00a0 But there\u2019s this notion in my country that somehow the United States is just a bystander.\u00a0 We are an observer.\u00a0 We are a witness to history.\u00a0 It\u2019s not our problem now.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have any say.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have any influence.\u00a0 The Iraqi government is sovereign.\u00a0 And basically sometimes when we listen to these conversations we get the impression that we should be happy, we should be grateful, we should be satisfied that instead of relocating the residents throughout Iraq the Malaki government has said, \u201cWell, all right, we\u2019ll make a concession.\u00a0 We\u2019ll move them from the Camp Ashraf to Camp Liberty.\u201d\u00a0 Well that\u2019snot enough.\u00a0 And it\u2019s delusional to think\u2014and I say this to my president, to my secretary of state and all the decent and well-intentioned people in this administration\u2014youcannot deny history.\u00a0 You cannot change history.\u00a0 We are the country that asked the residents to surrender their weapons of self-defense.\u00a0 The United States asked, not the UN, not Iran, not Iraq.\u00a0 We asked.\u00a0 We are the country, the United States is the country, that gave written assurances.\u00a0 We, the United States of America.\u00a0 We assure you that we will protect you since we have taken away your ability to protect yourself.\u00a0 Big issues involved here, none greater in my judgment than America\u2019s credibility.\u00a0 So this notion that we ought to just sit idly by and try to push and move as gently as we possibly can, and I do say this with great respect to those involved in these discussions, you\u2019re not a bystander.\u00a0 You are not a witness.\u00a0 You are not a interlocutor, you\u2019re not an intermediary.\u00a0 It is absolutely essential, as previousspeakers have said and will continue to say, there\u2019s a legal and moral obligation to exert every conceivable influence you possibly can to ensure the safety and security of these residents.\u00a0 It\u2019s the United States\u2019 responsibility.<\/p>\n I think the historians will probably talk about some of the legitimate demands that the residents are calling upon the broader world community to support.\u00a0 They made the single largest concession possible in order to avoid another massacre.\u00a0 They\u2019ve agreed to be relocated at Camp Liberty.\u00a0 At one time they thought it was a military camp, they thought it was of massive size. And all of a sudden it has been compressed to a small area around which they are building walls, which doesn\u2019t sound like a resettlement camp, it sounds more like a prison. And we must demand that the U.S. and the UN live up to those promises made early on in the discussions about humane conditions at Camp Liberty.\u00a0 The preservation and protection of privacy.\u00a0 We do have 1,000 women.\u00a0 We have been told there will be a robust U.S. presence there to observe, which we think is very important.\u00a0 But we\u2019re still unsure what that means.\u00a0 We\u2019re told that there will be UN observers there, but we don\u2019t know whether they\u2019re going to be intermingled with the residents or whether or not they\u2019re going to be outside the prison walls or gates and only allowed access when the Iraqi government chooses to allow them access.\u00a0 We see no reason whatsoever, it\u2019s not an unreasonable demand to keep the Iraqi police and the Iraqi army outside of Camp Liberty.\u00a0 It\u2019s a matter of sovereignty, it\u2019s on Iraqi soil.\u00a0 We appreciate that.\u00a0 There\u2019s no reason for them to be involved and have personnel inside camp Liberty, none whatsoever.\u00a0 And you know why we\u2019re concerned about that?\u00a0 Let history not record that this panel said publicly that there was an incident or two inside the camp precipitated by either the police or by the Iraqi Army and used as an excuse for the humanitarian massacre and onslaught that all of us are working so hard to resist.\u00a0 The demands are reasonable.\u00a0<\/p>\n And I say to the UN special envoy, to our special envoy, you must use every influence you possibly can.\u00a0 And for those who say we have no\u2014we\u2019re not part of this anymore, I\u2019ll remind my friends in the United States, 4,400 Gold Star mothers in America whose sons and daughters have been killed to bring self-governance and democracy to Iraq.\u00a0 And I would daresay I would not want to be speaking for them, the pain, the sorrow, the anguish to have lost someone in Iraq.\u00a0 But I can\u2019t believe that a single American parent who lost a son or daughter on the field of battle in Iraq would tolerate a United States government sitting idly by while the government that their sons and daughters lost their life in fighting to preserve and protect went in and massacred innocent, defenseless citizens of another country.\u00a0 It is un-American. [applause]\u00a0 Un-American, unworthy of America.\u00a0 I like to tell people from time to time, America if it were a product what we try to sell is a brand.\u00a0 You know every product that you likes there\u2019sa brand associated with it and you\u2019re attracted to it.\u00a0 Sometimes I think America gets a little preachy around the world about our brand, there are certain characteristics of our country of which I\u2019m particularly proud.\u00a0 And it is the freedom and the tolerance and the diversity.\u00a0 It\u2019s also the rule of law, the Constitution of the United States, our credibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n So the fourth theme that I think we need to hopefully the historians will record is that our persistent cry to delist, delist, delist was finally heard by the United States government.\u00a0 The EU, the UK, even the courts in the United States that said there is no reason, there\u2019s no legal justification.\u00a0 My colleagues here have heard it, and perhaps you\u2019ve heard me mention this before, ladies and gentleman, but every day while I was privileged to serve my government both in the White House and as secretary of Homeland Security, just about every day for almost four years I got a list of terrorist threats against the United States.\u00a0 And I must tell you not on one occasion in those four years of getting those lists, sometimes there was a couple pages, sometimes there was a couple dozen pages, but at no time did I see a reference to the MEK.\u00a0 Never.\u00a0 And what an irony, what an absolute irony it is for the greatest terrorist state in the world, the most significant terrorist state in the world, the exporter of terrorism around the world that\u2019s got surrogates, Hamas, Hezzbolah, the Islamic Jihad, we all know what it is\u2014for them to be having so much influence in Baghdad after we\u2019ve sacrificed blood and treasure to give this regime an opportunity to create a freedom loving society.\u00a0 Delist, delist, delist, do it now.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NCRI – In an international conference held in Paris on Friday, January 6, at the invitation of the CFID (French Committee for Democracy and Human Rights in Iran), dozens of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[175],"class_list":{"0":"post-11614","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ashraf-liberty","7":"tag-updated"},"yoast_head":"\n![](\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2012\/01\/IMG_5305.JPG\" "\\"IMG_5305\\"")
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